


A Debt Paid

by deliciously_devient



Series: Death's Best Man [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Demons, Hellhounds, M/M, Supernatural - Freeform, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 10:06:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10384260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciously_devient/pseuds/deliciously_devient
Summary: "Jacob Laurence Maurice," Jesse's mouth said, throat vibrating with a force that wasn't a part of him. "You have a debt to pay."





	

The first time Jesse uses his gift, he and two of his gang are pinned in an old broken down bar, and there are at least eighteen men circling them, bike engines roaring and the sound of their rowdy laughter grating like nails on a chalkboard for Jesse.

  


Four of his friends are dead, and the lot of them are all green, barely initiated and horribly outgunned. This was supposed to be an easy job; there was supposed to just be one guard, looking after a cache of weapons Deadlock wanted to steal from Eastbay, and it had been a set up.

  


“Gimme your magazine,” Jesse demands of Eric, another recruit that’d joined with him, his eyes wide and scared as he handed over the clip to Jesse.

  


There were ten bullets left in his gun, and twelve in Eric’s. Jesse swallows hard, closes his eyes a moment, and when he opens them, that static overlay is on his eyes, revealing all the things he’s not supposed to see.

  


“What the hell?” Tom says, staring at Jesse with fear. Eric scrambles back, and Jesse figures something must happen to his eyes when he looks around like this, but he doesn’t have long to worry about it. The longer he looks around, the more likely something nasty is gonna notice him, and his arm aches as his prosthetic fingers clench into a fist in remembrance of the last time something had noticed him.

  


He does exactly what the men outside aren’t expecting; he steps out of the front door of the dilapidated bar, gun at his side, and a cocky grin on his face. In the distance, he sees something huge and scaled soaring over the desert sky,  but he pays it no mind, instead looking at the faint skulls hovering over the heads of his enemy.

  


“Well, well, ya got any last words, Deadlock punk?” one of the men shouts. Jesse’s hat is over his eyes, concealing whatever changes there are to the iris.

  


“Just one,” he says, slowly raising his head, getting a good look at the men in his sight. “Draw!”

  


In that moment, it’s like his enemies are frozen, moving, but so slowly it’s laughably easy to pull the trigger ten times, spin his gun, reload, and fire eight more times. Eighteen bodies fall, and as Jesse blinks away the static before that dragon notices him lookin, he thinks he hears a faint chuckle, a voice he hasn’t heard in over a year on a moonlit night.

  


He feels shaky, knees weak, as though something had been taken from him as he fired, and he sways. Eric and Tom slowly come out of the bar, observing the fallen bodies, side eying Jesse as they pick over the opposing gangs weapons and pockets.

  


“Jesse,” Eric says, after the boy joins them, looking at one of the bikes left behind from the dead men, a Harley. He reckons he gets first pick, seeing as how he killed the man it had belonged to. “What in Sam’s Hell was that?”

  


Jesse’s silent for a moment as he rummages through the saddlebags, looking for anything of interest. He finds a massive six shooter, an old Desert Eagle he thinks, and picks it up. It’s a bit heavy, and he bets the recoil is a bitch, but it spins in his hand like it was made for him.

  


He turns to Eric after a while, and a slow, cocky grin slowly overtakes his face.

  


“You should know better’n to get in a firefight with Death,” he says slowly, blinking, letting the static overtake his vision for a moment. He knows it works when Eric takes a step back, swallowing. He notices a dark skull hanging over Eric’s shoulder; he’ll be dead soon, but not by Jesse’s hand. The skulls he makes are red, vibrant, unapologetic. This one’s faded, as though the death coming for Eric will be quiet.

  


He blinks again and laughs, sitting astride his new bike and feeling like he’s got the biggest dick in the West.

  


***

Word gets around pretty quick about what happened down at the bar with Jesse. He himself didn’t say a word about it, just loaded up the guns from the cache, and went on his way, but he couldn’t control what Eric and Tom said.

  


Eighteen bullets, eighteen bodies, eighteen perfect holes between eighteen pairs of eyes. By the end of the week, it had doubled to nearly thirty four, and by the end of the month, it was fifty. Half the people in Deadlock didn’t believe it, and half thought it’d only been something like four or five Eastbay men, and that Jesse had gotten lucky.

  


He kept his head down, mostly, did as he was told and tried to avoid killing. Something about the faint chuckle he heard whenever he put a man in the ground made him feel like he was being laughed at.

  


Of course, you didn’t just kill eighteen men and expect no retribution, and it came when Jesse was alone -relatively, anyway, as the desert he was driving through was full of all sorts of nasty things, and even with his vision toned down, he could still hear the distant howls and roars. Dragons, he’d discovered, were particularly fond of flying during the night.

  


He was on his way back to the gorge from Santa Fe, having been sent to deliver a message to one of the inner city factions of the ever expanding Deadlock. It was gruntwork, but he supposed he was a grunt still, and he didn’t put up a fuss.

  


As he eyed the line of bikes blocking his path on the quiet highway, he wondered if he should have. 

  


“Well, well, well, if it ain’t the hottest shot in the West, boys,” one of them said as Jesse came to a stop, hand inching toward his gun. It was night, so he was loathe to look around. He’d only seen them in the distance before, but he knew hellhounds liked to roam the highways at night, and he’d seen packs of them tearing apart much larger, more dangerous creatures. “Jesse McCree, as I live and breathe.”

  


“Howdy,” Jesse said, cocking his head to one side and grinning carelessly. “Ya mind tellin’ who done sold me out? I’d like ta haunt the bastard.”

  


The ringleader chuckled, a full bellied thing as Jesse quietly cocked his gun and counted bodies. There must have been twenty of ‘em, and he had six bullets in the chamber of that damned desert eagle and only six extra bullets.

  


“I like a man who faces his death with humor,” the ringleader said, slowly walking toward Jesse.

  


Tilting his hat down, he let his vision become static, seeing a couple hellhounds staring curiously at the confrontation, their eyes burning bright blue in their skulls, otherwise looking just like normal dogs. One, a small one that resembled a golden retriever pup, boofed softly at him, tongue lolling out as it trotted forward towards Jesse, despite it’s mother barking at it.

  


It reached Jesse before the ringleader, nudging his boot and boofing again, tongue lolling out. If it weren’t for the blue fire in its eyes, it would be incredibly cute.

  


As the other man drew near, Jesse reached down and patted the hellhound on the head, shivering as ice washed through his veins at the contact. The presence of  _ something  _ invaded his mind, freezing up his limbs before settling inside, controlling his motion as he sat up, staring the man in the eye.

  


Jesse saw skulls hanging, burning blue over the man and his crew, and when he spoke, it was with the reverb of a thousand voices.

  


“Jacob Laurence Maurice,” Jesse’s mouth said, throat vibrating with a force that wasn’t a part of him. “You have a debt to pay.”

The man -Jacob- took a step back, his eyes widening. There was something like recognition in his eyes, and the sound of growling hellhounds was nearly deafening. Where there had only been a couple on the roadside moments ago, now there were nearly thirty, circling on all sides, teeth bared and eyes burning blue.

  


“You promised us souls in exchange for help,” Jesse said, and his throat was raw, blood seeping out of the corner of his mouth as this enormous, pressing  _ thing  _ used his body to convey it’s message. “You haven’t delivered. So you and your men will go to the hounds.”

  


There was a pressure pounding in his head, and Jesse started coughing, blood pouring out of his nose and lips as whatever it was left him, leaving him cold, shivering and slumped over his bike, blinking to clear the static from his eyes but it  _ wouldn’t leave. _

  


He’s unsure how much time passes, only that his limbs are too heavy to move, and the screams of dying men have long left. He drifts in and out of consciousness, finally jerking back to reality to a wet tongue licking dried blood off his cheek. He sees the little hellhound, the one that first approached him, and it’s eyes are no longer burning fire, and it boofs at him quietly.

  


Jesse sits up, wondering how his bike had stayed up without his legs supporting it, and looks at the small dog wagging its tail at him. Attached to it’s neck by a string is a note, and Jesse gently takes it, unfolding it carefully. The sun is just starting to come up, giving him just enough light to read the words, written in a flowing script.

  


_ Jesse, _

  


_ Thank you kindly for allowing me to use your body as host last night. Usually I ask, but well, I’d been trying to track that man for a while now and you presented the perfect opportunity to at least break even on my deal. _

_ In gratitude, I’ve left you little Shiva here. He’s a rascal, and young, just under a century, but he’ll come when you call. He eats primarily souls of the damned, so just let him hunt when he’s hungry, and you’ll be good. _

  


_ See you around, _

  


_ Abbadon _

  


Jesse reread the note at least five times, before staring at the dog - the  _ hellhound _ \- he’d just, apparently, been given. He looked at the dog, who just wagged its tail and boofed softly, nudging his metal hand for behind the ear scritches.

  


“Huh,” he said slowly, blinking. “Shiva, huh? You do any tricks?”

  


The dog barked, and then, as if to prove he could, in fact, do tricks, jumped down, and rolled over.

In the distance there was the roar of a dragon, and the faint baying of more hellhounds, and deeper howls that he hadn’t been able to identify just yet. He blinked, but his vision wouldn’t go back. He could still see everything he was supposed to.

  


Something was different in him, he knew. Somehow, Abbadon had changed something very fundamental in Jesse, removing something  _ human  _ and replacing it with something distinctly  _ inhuman. _

  


“Well now,” Jesse said to Shiva. “I reckon I belong with your lot, now.”


End file.
